Historic Downtown Houston Hotel Makes Its Restaurant Relevant

New Chef Believes in Beautiful Seafood

The historic Sam Houston Hotel is sporting a new restaurant and bar — The Pearl. Pictured: Gulf fried oysters

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Inside The Pearl's newly renovated interiors

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Jodie's steak tartare at The Pearl

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A peek inside The Pearl

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A bevy of seafood, like grouper, awaits at The Pearl.

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Snapper also graces The Pearl's menu.

The Sam Houston Hotel — or The Sam, as it‘s been affectionately known since the historic 100-room downtown hotel first opened in 1924 — had a 30-year hiatus as an operating hotel until its 2002 total renovation.

The current caretakers, the Houston hotel group American Liberty Hospitality, have now aligned their star property with The Curio Collection by Hilton, a select group of boutique hotels in the Hilton stable. The Sam is the first hotel in Houston to receive the designation, so in addition to spiffing up the rooms, a re-envisioning of the hotel’s restaurant and bar (formerly known as 17 and The Sam Bar) was in order.

They tapped local restaurant-concept creators Candice and Lonnie Schiller (Café Annie, Café Express, The Grove) as principals of their hotel/hospitality consulting firm H3D, together with architect Craig Schuster of Schuster, Inc. The team not only revamped the food and beverage venues, but took them down to the studs.

Hearkening back to the architectural details one might have found circa 1924, there are exposed-brick walls, columns clad in dark steel panels, chesterfield sofas, plantation shutters, and tiered chandeliers of oyster shells in what is now dubbed The Pearl Restaurant & Bar.